5-Minute Mobility is a single-pass, timed routine: five exercises, 60 seconds each, no rest in between, and you are done in exactly five minutes. It works through the shoulders, hips, spine and ankles - the four areas that stiffen fastest when you sit still and complain loudest when you finally move. There are no sets and no rounds. One clean pass is the whole workout.

The sequence travels top to bottom and shallow to deep. Slow wide arm circles open the shoulder girdle through its full arc first, because the shoulders need the least preparation to move well. Slow single hip rotations then take each hip through external rotation while the standing leg quietly works on balance. From there you go to the floor: deep lunge rotations combine a hip flexor stretch with thoracic rotation, cat / cow stretches move the spine through flexion and extension segment by segment, and the deep squat hold finishes by loading hips, knees and ankles in their deepest useful range all at once. Each exercise builds on the joint positions the previous one unlocked.

Slow is the operative word throughout. In the arm circles, make the arc as wide as your shoulders allow rather than as fast as your arms can spin. In the hip rotations, lift the knee first, then draw the circle with it - the movement comes from the hip socket, not from leaning your torso. In the deep squat, keep your heels down and use your elbows against your knees to gently prop the chest up. If a minute in the bottom feels long, shift your weight slowly from side to side instead of holding grimly still.

Five minutes is short enough to do before coffee finishes brewing - and your hips will know the difference all day.

Make it Harder: Run the sequence twice, back to back, for a 10-minute version.

Make it Easier: Cut each exercise to 30 seconds for a two-and-a-half minute pass.